ICYMI: Star Wars Episode 7 Trailer

But I mean really, how could you have missed it? Yesterday the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens hit the internet like a storm. But just in case some of you were still in a food coma and/or trapped in a Black Friday-related incident, here’s the trailer:

My initial reaction cannot be printed, simply because I don’t know how to quite capture the sudden drooling and giggles of delight.

But I’m a nerd at heart, so let’s break-down what we saw here. Or, at the very least, the stuff that caught my attention…

This poor stormtrooper seems awfully frightened. And I would be too, given how racially homogeneous the Star Wars universe has been up until this point. But his apparent confusion and/or fear was a great way to start this little clip. Made me want to know what the poor guy experienced. And where his helmet is.

What. The heck. Is this?

I mean, on one level, I get it. Astromech technology has to have progressed in the past who knows how many years and this does make a certain amount of sense. But it just looks…silly. Maybe it’s just me.

Say what you will, the sight of a line of stormtroopers getting ready to storm something made me giddy again. Is our friend from the beginning of the trailer in this group? What, exactly, are they about to do? And has their snazzy new uniforms helped improve their aim at all?

Okay, I’m sold. Just the sight of X-Wings skimming the surface of a lake caused my geek-out levels to skyrocket to epic heights. Put me in mind of Michael Stackpole’s great novels.

Then there’s this. When I first saw this new lightsaber design, my already epic geek-out levels multiplied geometrically and I once again started giggling.

But then I started to dissect it a little. There’s something…off about this lightsaber. It doesn’t look quite right visually (and I’m not talking about the placement of the hand guard). I saw a theory online that suggests that maybe this guy is an ancient Sith Lord who recently reawakened from some sort of hibernation and that this lightsaber is ancient tech. That would be really cool, if true.

And then we hit the best part:

Just seeing the Millennium Falcon, even for a few moments, was enough to satisfy me. Good to see the hunk of junk in action again. Great to see the TIEs screaming past it.

What surprised me most? The almost total absence of lens flare. I mean, this is J.J. Abrams, after all. Maybe he knows to save it for the movie.

So I am excited about what I saw in this trailer, but after watching it two or three times, I also started to feel a sense of trepidation, mostly because of what happened fifteen years ago.

Fifteen years ago, I heard a rumor that the trailer for Episode I was going to be playing before the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State. So I did what any Star Wars fan would do: I went to that movie only to see the trailer. And I remember feeling the same sort of geeky excitement as Darth Maul appeared with his double-bladed lightsaber. And we all know how that turned out.

Hopefully things will be better this time around. But as far as trailers go, this one isn’t half bad.